Wood for beetles

S

Sean C

L2
This is a general question about wood. I am wondering if there is a common list of wood species that are suitable for beetles. Or maybe wood that should be avoided? Pine is highly discouraged with tarantulas, but apparently favored by bark beetles for example. Generally it is pine or scrub oak in yavapai county, but there is maple and cottonwood here as well and I was going to try and find some decaying stuff here for whatever these grubs are. Oak is commonly recommended, but I read one poster say they switched from cyprus to oak and I lost grubs.....

Also, while there is no way really to accelerate decay of wood, would simply keeping it moist all the time at least keep the process moving constantly?

 
I think keeping it moist all the time does keep the process going, although you might have to watch out for mold and stuff if you don't have enough ventilation. Cotinis is fairly an easy species to keep, imo, unless it's not cotinis that is lol. But, any beetle grub should do fine on any rotten hardwood, although i recommend oak,maple, or ash.

 
I second Oak (the user and the tree). Oak is a member of the same genus as beech, which apparently many beetles do well on. Try fermenting flake soil, collecting can take awhile (forever) but it's usually is better quality than faux decyed wood (femented sawdust, which is esentially cheating and putting the wood through intense decomposition. I wouldn't recommend cotton wood, as it's similar in softness to Aspen.

 
Hmmmmm I will have to find some rotting oak then.....sounds like a challenge. I am not sure ash is in this area so I will look into that.

Is pine ever safe? Plenty of that here. I would think the pine would need to be very well aged before use though.

I also heard payson is common place for Granti, but I thought payson was heavy pine, so not sure what would draw them to that area...

I haven't heard of fermented flake soil so I will check that out as well.

Thank you for the suggestions!

 
There has been cases of beetles consuming pine. The cases I know of where metioned by a user here, Matt. Only two cases, possibly a few more now, the stag was L Cervus. I think you're right on the age of the pine and type of bacteria or fungi colonized on it, but stay away from it.

You want forest material from deciduous forests. If your beetle larvae is a flower beetle grub they like leaf compost.

 
Hmmmm interesting. Well there are around 25 of them. The dominating materials in the garden were......

Peat Moss

Horse manure

Lesser ingredients....

A bag or 2 of compost from the store for luck, and dead roots whose origin I can't fathom....

Deciduous material is typically recommended right for most non predatory beetles? If so, why are Cottonwood trees, deciduous right? why are they not suggested? Quite abundant here in certain areas so it would be easier for me to get ahold of. Unless they are somehow toxic, do you see a reason not to try it?

I did find some well ripened scrub oak wood that I plan to break down tomorrow and toss in with both these grubs and my millipedes so hopefully someone finds it acceptable.

 
Cottonwood is and so is Aspen, but they are softer woods. So you have really hard wood, Japanese maple for example that can take over 100 years to mature. I think we want the harder woods, the old ass wood. Pine grows really quick! Give it a shot. I know certain species of stag feed on it, Lucanus mention it. I hear it's good for growing mushrooms.

 
From Good Wood:

Greatwun said:
I thought I read some where that people could use maple as well. People, including myself have even found larvae inside of pine trees! I have found larvae of Phileurus truncatus in rotting long leaf pines and once in a cypress pine.
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But...

Acro said:
Greatwun,

I've read that using maple, pine, and cypress (at least in captivity) will cause larvae to take 2ce as long to pupate. Also, that the adults may emerge small and/or sickly.

But that's just what I've read. Of course it will not apply to all beetle species and it is very likely that some will do better with wood/leaves from those trees.

If you experiment with those trees, please let the forum know how it works out!
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Greatwun said:
It's interesting that you mentioned that because all the larvae that I collected from the cypress pine died. On nights that dropped below 40 degrees F some would come to the surface, shrivel up and die. This occurred for over a month until all cypress pine specimens died. Maybe they did not acquire enough nutrients to make them strong to survive the cold. Which makes me wonder why the parents would have ever chosen to lay the eggs in the dead cypress pine. But I did also collect a batch from a rotting long leaf pine and they made it to adulthood just fine.
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Many conifers have volatile oils, making them unsuitable, though it is possible that the oils will slowly disperse in some occasions.

Best to avoid them.

 
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I was assuming maple would work. That qoute above doesn't inspire much confidence in gathering it and leaves me with only scrub oak as an option, or some other food source I am unaware of in the area.

Where then does everyone else acquire your wood?

It seems for me the challenge for anything that dines on wood, is finding a suitable source for them.

 
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There are different methods to accelerate the decay of wood. Lucanus uses artificially fermented oak and he grows awesome majors.

I use natural oak, but am going to ferment the traeger oak pellets, it is more convenient and I don't see how it's cheating.

You can't just keep fresh wood constantly moist for your larvae, it's not the same as decomposed wood, plus it will mold if the humidity is too high.

Pine in not suitable for most mushrooms.

 
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Thanks for the link AlexW.

What I am really taking away so far is that Oak is best generally speaking.

There is probably little scientific progress being made on most beetle species generally speaking.

I have to assume though that not every batch of eggs is laid in ideal material for larva development and little research is being done to determine the range of material a specific species of beetle is consuming or able to grow to adulthood successfully on. I would also assume that larva are not capable of significant travel....so where they are laid is where they develop, or die.

I guess there are far more unanswered questions than answered ones and it mostly comes from hobbyists.....

Does anyone know of a way for me to have my soil tested, or rather for me to have the chunks of wood in it tested? I am kind of interested to see what is in this soil I ended up making. Clearly the grub I have are growing well in it.

 
I think it's really about giving variety at different levels of decay. Alder grows out west right? I'll ask my parents, basically a faster version of wiki when it's plant oriented.

 
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Alder is commonly eaten by larva? If I have seen Alder I do not recognize it so I will have to look up some pics.

Thanks muddmire

 
How can you tell birch from other trees? After learning about the appearance of beech, I see that it's leaves are similar to other species. Anyone have a relatively foolproof technique for determining which is which?

 
You should not try to key any plants based one a single characteristic as many plants can and so share characteristics. You'll need to key the trees by leaves, bark, and potentially flowers and seeds if you want to be 100% certain what you have.

 
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